The Blue Pill.

[BIAD]

As the strange taste of the Blue Pill fades and many of us begin to come out from under the cloud of
fuzzy 'Let's-Overreact' media-frenzy, there may still be some who struggle to come to terms with what
the supposed crazy people call 'reality'

Brexit vote site may have been hacked, MPs say in report.

'A voter registration site that crashed in the run-up to last year's EU referendum could have been
targeted by a foreign cyber attack, MPs say...'



Oh my word, the BBC are informing it's readers that unknown parties did just what some of what
the rest of the mainstream media have been crowing on about! Though the words 'may' and 'could'
are in their first sentences, I'm sure the evidence of such a claim is only moments way in the editorial
below.

'...The "register to vote" site crashed on 7 June last year just before the deadline for people to sign up to vote.
The UK government and electoral administrators blamed a surge in demand after a TV debate...'

You say crashed... It crashed because the hackers forced it to crash, huh...? I'm not up on the buzzwords
used in the computer world, but a 'demand' I'll assume is something that indicates these pesky hackers
were in the Registration site doing what they do and this caused the 'crash'
That must be it.

'...But MPs on the parliamentary Public Administration Committee say a foreign cyber attack could not
be ruled out...'

Oh I see... er, it only might have been a hack. But let's not get bogged down with semantics, I'm sure the
PCA will shed light on why this article exists.

'...The suggestion came in their report at the end of their inquiry into Lessons learned from the EU Referendum.
The report, and published evidence with the report, does not appear to quote anyone saying that the voter
registration site had been targeted...'

So nobody mentioned a targeted hack and by doing so, implied a hacking could have taken place.
Maybe it was a dragon of some sort, because they didn't mention that either. Still... it's the British Broadcasting
Company we're dealing with here and being such an established, worthy conduit to the public, I feel confident that
the heading above will be borne out.

'...And the Cabinet Office, who commissioned its own report into the website crash, said: "We have been very
clear about the cause of the website outage in June 2016.
It was due to a spike in users just before the registration deadline.

"There is no evidence to suggest malign intervention. We conducted a full review into the outage and have applied
the lessons learned. We will ensure these are applied for all future polls and online services."..'

Silly-billy Cabinet Office! This piece has hinted that it was targeted by unknown hackers, but just hasn't provided
the evidence yet. Surely the BBC wouldn't write a whole article full of imagined scenarios?

'...The website crashed at about 10.15pm on 7 June, 2016,, shortly after a televised debate and amid social
media campaigns to get people to register to vote ahead of the midnight deadline.
Official figures suggest 525.000 people applied to register to vote that day.



The Public Administration Committee's chairman, Leave-supporting Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, told
BBC News there was no "hard and fast" evidence the registration site had been targeted.
But he said the committee's report had included the possibility that the crash "may have been caused by a
DDoS (distributed denial of service attack) using botnets" in its report "on advice".
He declined to elaborate further...'

So there's not only no evidence of a targeted hacking with malevolent intentions of changing the EU referendum
outcome, there's actual suggestions that botnets full of maleware were responsible for the website not working.
Could these sent-cyber menaces be the culprits..? Oh, he declined to elaborate further.
My money is still on the dragon.

'...At the time of the website crash the then Prime Minister David Cameron extended the deadline by 48 hours
for registering to vote in the referendum - 430,000 people applied to register to vote during that extension period.

According to evidence submitted to the committee from the Association of Electoral Administrators the electoral
registration system "could not cope with the demand... and any contingency measures were wholly inadequate".
It says: "This concern had been raised on a number of occasions... reassurances had been given that what actually
occurred could never happen."...'

So the botnet hackers caused the failure to cope with the demand then...? The 'contingency measures' were unable
to halt the onslaught of these hacker-owned vius carriers and ergo, this is the evidence that the Government website
was hacked. I see now.

'Analysis by Chris Baraniuk, Technology reporter
That foreign parties might have tried to crash a government website in the lead up to a key poll is a serious suggestion,
but does it hold much weight? Cybersecurity experts are sceptical.

"I think there's lots of conjecture," says Ollie Whitehouse at NCC Group. "It appears to be one committee's opinion
but with no supporting evidence."...'

Oh well, that's put the kybosh on my explanation! Someone on the Committee said it, but we don't know who
and those well-versed in cyber-security are sceptical... this article doesn't seem to be as exciting as the headline
first implied.
In fact... dare I use the word 'fake'?!

'...He also pointed out that government websites were known to suffer during periods of unusually high demand,
though their robustness had improved in recent years.

The wording of the report is, indeed, "very vague", notes John Graham-Cumming at networking firm Cloudflare
 In order to really know what happened, traffic to the website prior to the downtime would have to be analysed.
That is only possible if adequate records have been kept, Mr Graham-Cumming adds.
"Most websites don't store very detailed information," he notes. But if logs show traffic from a large number of
sources around the world, that might indicate that a botnet - a system of enslaved computers - was used to
attack the site. "That could be interesting," he says...'

I'm sure it would be interesting to the computer boffins and regardless of the 'very vague' analysis from the
Association of Electoral Administrators, is there any evidence for this article actually implying such an offence?

'...It said that civil servants should be required to prepare for both possible outcomes in future referendums
- such as a second vote on Scottish independence - something they had been prevented from doing in the
run-up to the Brexit vote...'

So next time, the civil servants should load software to guard against malware...? Is that what you're saying?!
Or is this wildly-partisan article merely a vehicle to suggest that the Governement needs to put a plan in place
in case a referendum doesn't go the way the established upper-middle class want? 
Or would that be too outlandish? -unlike this whole article. (smirk!)

...The committee called on the government to set up a new Cyber Security Centre to monitor and contain
potential attacks on UK elections and referendums - particularly foreign attempts to influence public opinion
and disrupt the democratic process.

"The US and UK understanding of 'cyber' is predominantly technical and computer-network based," said the report.
"For example, Russia and China use a cognitive approach based on understanding of mass psychology and of
how to exploit individuals.

"The implications of this different understanding of cyber-attack, as purely technical or as reaching beyond the
digital to influence public opinion, for the interference in elections and referendums are clear," the report added...'
The BBC.

Phew...! For a moment there I thought you weren't going to get the word 'Russia' in!
Well done BBC and very informative.


Edit: Just like freakin' seagulls, The Guardian follows with their 'suspicious' point of view.
SOURCE: